About Me

Turkish rug makers

We recently went to Turkey and thoroughly enjoyed a tour of a craft house where they hand-make rugs. Silkworm cocoons, of course.

Turkish Rugmaking

First you boil the silkworm cocoons to loosen the glue that holds the silk threads in place...

Turkish Rugmaking

She stirs the pot with that bristle brush you see, and it pulls up several hundred silk threads at a time. Here she is twisting them and feeding them to a loom.

Silk Threads

If you look closely, you can see all the threads feeding into the loom. They are REALLY fine!

Raw silk

Fresh off the loom. Silky and sensual.

Silkworm

Here's the poor thing that sacrificed her life for our silks.

Turkish Rugs

Here's a partially finished rug along with the naturally-dyed yarns hanging ready.

Tour near Ephesus of a Turkish rug-making shop.

These are the natural materials they use to make dyes. Sage for green, madder for red, henna for peach, walnut shells for brown, oak apples for beige, indigo for blue, red onion skins for rose, tobacco leaves for yellow, and some kind of root for black.

A young lady working on a rug.

It's really amazing how fast they are at this.

Turkish tour

Another look at those natural color-sources. I asked about cochineal, because you couldn't just have that on a shelf, and yes, their deep reds are cochineal. It's a South American insect that is a parasite to the prickly pear. Owners deposit them into their fields, and blow them off and collect them once they're big. Then they crush their fat, bloody bodies for a nice, natural, red dye. I'm so happy to report that the rug we purchased has cochineal in it. I'm also happy to report that it's likely in your lipstick and blush, ladies, and if you drink cherry coke - it's in there, too! :)

Post-tour tea

This young lady is serving us apple tea, a mainstay of the Turkish diet. It's delicious and tastes like fresh squeezed apples. VERY HOT - we could never understand how the Turks could hold these classic Turkish cups without burning themselves.

Turkish Tea

Wish I had some of that right now! Note the rugs in the background. Two muscular men would roll 'em out while one man described them to us. We bought a lovely rug at an astonishingly good price considering the hundreds of hours it took for someone to make it.

Turkish Rugs

Gorgeous. Gorgeous. By the way, you can tell the quality of a Turkish rug by looking at it from opposite angles. The colors change when viewed from opposite ends. If the colors don't change, you ain't got a good one!

Our Rug

This is the one we bought. They shipped it to us as it wouldn't quite fit into our suitcases!

Turkish Swallows

Just had to post this one as well - they put up these baskets all over for the swallows! I haven't looked them up yet, but the swallows near Ephesus had a beautiful peach breast and steel blue on its wings.

Fish

I love these copper fish! They are a rain chain. You're supposed to hang these chains under a spot on your house where the rain runs off; it helps with erosion. Ours just helps with ambience as it's under our arbor.

Gorgeous Native Plants

Baby Kale

I just planted our winter garden. Kale, carrots, lettuce, onions. The smallest sprouts you see here are my babies just coming up. You also see my favorite broken plate, broken side stuck into the ground.

Mario

My Car

This is what my car usually looks like. Just like popcorn is a vehicle for butter and salt, coffee is a vehicle for cream and sugar, my car is, well, a vehicle for art supplies! Sometime I'll show you a picture of my TRUNK! By the way, it's a Mitsubishi Outlander. I've had it for a couple months and LOVE IT! Funny thing is, I've only seen probably three Outlanders since I've gotten this one. Nice to be a rare bird on the road.

Me and 'My' Kids

Yessiree, this is the sets painting crew. First thing I did was give them lessons in brush cleaning and care, paint can opening and paint care, storage and safety. We're a few weeks into our work in this picture, as you can see, all the kids are confidently wielding their weapons-of-choice... paintbrushes!

Laying out the straight lines with the chalk line. Oh, so satisfying!

The kids loved working with this! Shortens the work hours a lot, too.

Laying the Tape

Now they're laying the tape over the chalk lines for the shelves. Don't want no crooked lines!

Painting Books

Each student got to choose his own color of books, and together we filled the cases.

Books!

Oh yes, book painting requires a lot of thought!

And More Books!

This set may seem simple when you think about it, but a lot of work and layers have already gone into it. It's been fun work, though!

Music Man Benches

Benches for the gym scene, and for the library scene.

Checking out the Paint

Ahh... paints, lovely paints!

Music Man

One of my students and me taking a short break

Music Man Sets Students

Crazy kids, every one of 'em!

'My' Chair

At our theatre the other night we had an orchestra meeting after I taught my sets class. After about a half hour, someone pulled me out of the meeting for a few minutes. When I came back, everyone in the room was laughing and pointing to the nice, uh, black leather chair. I had paint on the back of my shirt, and it permanently smeared all over the leather! The last time I went in the office, I noticed that someone had taped up the sign you see here. One way to lay claim to something! Well, it's not the first time, let's see, there's my driveway with many colors of paint, our carpet with Peter Pan green footprints, my car with yellow paint on the seat, my gloves, half of my clothes. It seems like everyone likes my painted clothes, kind of like already-broken-in-jeans. Maybe I should start a clothing line!

Me outside Durer's House

This is in Nuremberg, Germany, a gorgeous and very old town. Albrecht Durer's home was positively AWESOME! It was here we began our tour.

Durer's Studio

His mortar and pestle, tools. Durer (1471-1528) was a contemporary and admirer of Martin Luther. Durer chose to glorify God by painting God's creation realistically. This was his artist's praise to his Maker.

Durer's Studio

Minerals to be ground for pigment. Some of the minerals were extremely expensive, like this blue lapis lazuli.

Durer's Studio

This is how he would mix the ground pigments with an oil and binder. Often egg was used. I've made egg temperas before, and they're VERY long-lasting! Like hundreds of years' worth of long-lasting. Now and then I have problems with certain pigments fading - not with egg tempera. No UV varnish or anything - it just lasts and lasts. Just like the EverReady Bunny.

Durer's Window

One of his beautiful windows. This is very old, old glass; do they call it bottle glass? Something to look up. We saw some extraordinary windows in Germany, and particularly in France.

Inside Durer's House

Looking at his Dragon-light. This is my daughter, Melody. We loved the many-headed dragon, but decided it just wouldn't fit in our suitcases! :)

Durer's Studio

More pigments to be ground to mix into paint.

One of St. Jerome's Studies

This showed how he used blocks to make his prints. He was one of the great masters at this technique, above all others and second only to Rembrandt. By the way, we went to Holland and toured Rembrandt's house - it was amazing, too! One of these days I'll dig out those pictures and post them.

Durer's Studio

Pigments. Artists almost had to be chemists in order to paint. Just thinking about it teaches me patience.

Me with my piccolo and flute

This was from our Cinderella show. Note the rather large mole on my cheek - this was a nod to the wicked stepsisters and their moles! You may also notice the chunk taken out of my left forearm - I had cancer surgery in January to remove an aggressive melanoma. Remember, people, life is GOOD! This month there was a change in the site and we had to do another biopsy. Last week it came back benign! Praise God!

Ancient Ephesus

This was taken during our tour of the ancient city of Ephesus. Wow! We learned that if an angel's wings were outspread, it meant that angel still had work to do. Obviously, I still have work to do myself! And yes, there were red poppies everywhere and they were stunning.

Poppies in Ephesus

Here's another picture of the vibrant poppies we saw everywhere.

Tour Group

Our entire tour group (minus yours truly, the picture taker). We spent the entir day together and were like family by the end of the day.

My pastor knows I usually draw picture during his sermons. Seals in the theme for me.

This particular sketch was from a very moving gathering of people from a number of churches in our area. It was beautiful to see the people of Christ come together under one God and in one purpose.

New England Trip

We went to New England in the middle of November, thinking it was too late for fall color. Boy, were we wrong! This breathtaking tree was on FIRE! Yep. That was me, standing out in front of a funeral home taking scores of pictures of... I think this is a Japanese Maple. As it turned out, they had a much warmer than usual fall and the leaves were gorgeous.

Old building in Strassbourg, France

This is the old building facing Cathedral Square, right across from the Strassbourg Cathedral. We ate at an outdoor cafe so we could take in the view as we dined, and particularly liked this ancient fellow with his old, old glass.

Revelation 1

Everyone that comes into our home wants this acrylic! I finally decided to make giclees of it to sell. It illustrates Revelation 1 - when Christ comes back. You can see only Christ's hand - didn't seem appropriate to do His face. Actually, I took pics of my hand (too feminine,) my daughter's hand (same,) and then my oldest son had to pose his hand in myriad different ways before I settled on this one. You can barely see the seven stars Christ is holding in orbit because they're laid down with an iridescent gold paint. The stars are held within his power and care. All over the picture I have exerpts of Revelation 1 in different languages, because Jesus is the author of all language. The entire picture has a lot of iridescents on it. For the giclees, each one will be unique, because printing companies can't lay down iridescents. I'll be handpainting those on after the printer gets them on canvas, which will make them even more special. My piece is on canvas as well, and measures 18x24".

Ye old Bucket and Brushes

This is a common sight in my driveway. I am an expert brush washer! It's always a fun ride teaching ten kids how to paint simultaneously, and boy, do they get the brushes dirty! With these big brushes, I give 'em a good washing with the hose, then let them sit in an inch of water in the bucket overnight (remember, you don't want the water getting up under the ferrule.) The next day, I'll do it again. Usually they're clean by that time, but sometimes I have to repeat the process. Remember, if you take care of your brushes, they'll last a lifetime. If you don't, they may last a day or two. For my fine arts brushes, I use a brush cleaner called 'The Master's Brush Cleaner and Preserver' made by Generals. I went to an art teacher's convention and the vendor said that it not only cleans your brushes, but conditions them. I use it to clean them, then work more into the bristles and let them sit that way until I paint again. It's done wonders for my brushes. They also claim that they can get dried paint out of brushes. Haven't tried that, but if the brushes are really full of paint, if I load them with this stuff, the paint won't dry in. Anybody have experience with dried-in paint?

German Graffiti

Each of my kids, being artistic as well as me, took little sketchpads to Germany to fill as we traveled. Little did we know we'd be filling them up with graffiti stickers more than drawings! They were everywhere! Some of them were amazing and really graphic. Graffiti artists go to great lengths in their little 'home publishing' houses to create some seriously interesting art. Here Chase is peeling one off.

Graffiti

Ahh... satisfied. It turned out that we had graffiti races, each of us competing to see who could get the best sticker! Graffiti began with spray paint. As graffiti is highly illegal, artists turned to producing art on stickers, so they could slap them up quickly. Some of the first stickers used were postal service stickers as they're weatherproof. The 'My Name Is' stickers that we all wear at events were very popular too. Since then, graffiti artists have graduated and gotten pretty sophisticated.

Graffiti

Chase is examining a fascinating door which was set into a small mountain. It's probably 300 or so steps up to Heidelberg Castle. We just had to stop to take in this door! I really love the contrast between the hundreds-of-years-old stone and the, uh, more modern door.

Graffiti

Because Grant's 6'3", he had the advantage over the rest of us. Rats! I just couldn't reach that one! Although Grant definately won the sticker-collection race, he helped the rest of us with the hard-to-reach-ones (after he'd gotten doubles.) Well, he may have won the race, but we all enjoyed the ride. :)

Walking the streets of Nuremberg.

We particularly enjoyed this little, tiny door with the heart-shaped lock. This was up against an extremely old castle - one of the oldest in Europe, built in the 1000s.

Of course, after touring Durer's house, we had to have a fine lunch!

My family enjoying a much needed break.

I snapped this cool photo in a sewing shop.

I could spend considerable chunks of time just wandering around in shops like this! This particular wall was all buttons. In drawers. With clear fronts. Anything that is laid out like the color wheel will grab my attention. In fact, I just bought a color wheel watch, which changes colors as it ticks. Love that color! Makes me happy!

Seussical Sets Truffula Trees

Me and Allie, one of my awesome students, working on a scene for one of our shows - Seussical! This was a really fun production because I had to design everything to look cartoonish... well... Dr. Seuss-ish! Gave me a chance to go crazy with really bright colors! In this picture, we still had to add a lot of foilage; we painted the black front green and added more plants. These sets have to be sturdy enough to allow MANY people dancing on and around them. Right before one of our shows, somebody jumped over a plant and BROKE IT! A very fast and intense fix-up job ensued, just in time for the curtain to open! Whew!